Mayday is Top Gun 3: The propaganda continues

One reason popular movies become popular is because they make the viewers feel good about themselves or a group with which they associate themselves. This is also why popular movies make for such effective propaganda.

The movie Top Gun is a classic example of a popular movie that is very effective propaganda. The viewer of the movie leaves it feeling that US Navy fighter pilots are the coolest people ever. Is it any surprise that the US Navy supported the film?

Once you start to realize the role movies play as propaganda, it's hard not to notice the effect. With that in mind, this evening, I watched the new Apple Original Films movie Mayday. It is a classic good versus evil movie that follows the story of a US Navy fighter pilot recruited by the CIA to fly a top-secret mission on the SR-71 Blackbird over Soviet Russia near the end of the Cold War. The spy plane is shot down over Russia and the pilot ejects and passes out on impact in the snow-covered forest. He awakens in a cabin that is basically a shrine to 1980s American kitsch and pop culture. His rescuer turns out to be a former KGB agent who left the KGB because he suddenly had moral qualms about their mission when his daughter turned out to be a lesbian. He also apparently has a hard-on for America. And guess what this former KGB agent wants more than ever? You guessed it...he wants to help the pilot escape and to be granted asylum so that he and his daughter can go to America and eat McDonalds.

As with any good propaganda film, it's impossible to say if this movie was intended to be propaganda or just intended to be a film that the audience would like. The intention doesn't really matter though because it is very effective in reinforcing views about themselves and their country that Americans already hold. Views like:

• everyone wants to move to our country
• our culture is the best
• our military is always on the side of good in the fight against good and evil
• our government may make mistakes but always does the right thing in the end

Anyways, none of this makes the movie less enjoyable. If you're looking for a fun, slightly silly action movie, give it a watch. Just don't overthink it!